Posted on 05/01/2013 6:54:27 AM PDT by marshmallow
Reading Sherry Weddell’s excellent Forming Intentional Disciples is making me think about the American church and what ails her. Can anybody deny that there is a sickness in the body ecclesia? When 50% of Catholics vote for a man who stoutly defends same sex marriage and partial birth abortion can we say that Catholics in America are okay?
I don’t think so.
Thus a series of posts on what’s killing Catholicism. All the words begin with the letter ‘C’. I can’t help it. I was brought up as a Biblical Evangelical and our pastors always used alliteration to make their points memorable.
The first problem is cultural catholicism. The Poles, Italians, Irish, French, Czech, German and more Catholics came here from the old country and the bishops reckoned the best thing to do with them all was to allow cultural parishes. So in the same town the Irish Catholics went to St Patrick’s and the Poles to St Stanislaus and the Italians to St Anthony of Padua. Geesh, a man in my parish who grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania said that when he was a boy a girl from his Czech parish fell in love with an Irish boy and the Irish priest wouldn’t marry them because it was a mixed marriage.
I’m all for cultural customs and so forth, but the problem is that the immigrant Catholics–in a foreign land–clung to their culture for security and happiness and part of that culture was their Catholicism. The didn’t distinguish their culture from their Catholicism. Then, after a few generations, when they were all really American and stopped being Italian or Irish or German they also stopped being Catholic. The Catholic faith wasn’t much deeper than Mama’s special spaghetti sauce or stories of the Blarney stone.
Of course they didn’t.........
(Excerpt) Read more at patheos.com ...
It is impossible to deal with that situation except to point out how obvious it is that this stuff is just made up.
"Around here the two churches that brag the most about being Evangelical Bible Based churches voted about 97% for Obama."
I would like to see the source for the voting breakdown for those two most Evangelical churches, claiming that they they voted 97% Obama.
Nationally the Evangelical vote went 80% republican, Catholics of course voted Obama again.
Why would you hide what city you are talking about, making claims about, posting about, making up statistics about?
Backatcha.
You are not Evangelical, as near as I can remember.
The same measure you use can be measured against you.
That’s making it personal because it’s calling me a liar.
Of course, that’s the stock in trade of those who are trying to avoid anything but their propaganda party line. I suppose there are people who deny that 97% of black folks who voted voted for Barry bacause nearly all of those same voters say they’re Protestan, Bible Based, Christians. That doesn’t change the facts.
Now I"m Catholic and I also now recognize “former Catholics” who think they're omniscient for what they really are.
If you have a source for knowing that those two Evangelical churches voted 97% Obama, some evidence that it isn’t made up, then please post it.
Even the black vote didn’t go 97% Obama, and the Evangelical vote went 80% pro-life republican.
"Catholics are few and far between where I live in the South but there are eleven churches who get together and set aside a Sunday each year to "celebrate diversity" and preach about what a wonderful blessing being queer is."
"I seriously doubt the thousands of people who show up for those services who claim to be Methodists, Baptists, Independent Evangelicals, and all sorts of other things are voting for any Conservative or ever have but they sure do vote for scum like King Barry and any democrat fascist agenda item that comes down the pike."
"Around here the two churches that brag the most about being Evangelical Bible Based churches voted about 97% for Obama."
None of that even approaches reality, that is why it cannot be revealed where this mystery world, where everything is upside down and reversed, exists.
By the way, what does it even mean that churches "brag" about being Evangelical?
With all these numbers and percentages being bandied about, and yet unable to tie them to anything specific, reminds me of the time the blueprint called for an accuracy of .0005% but all we had to measure with was an old yardstick.
I think that your post just revealed it all.
You appear to think that facts don't exist, so one just creates his own personal voting data and statistics to fit the conversation and promote an agenda regardless of the truth and the actual facts.
You don't seem to realize that we collect and have the actual voting data, going back for generations, we don't just make them up from our personal experiences and observations, and from talking to friends.
Bo Jangles dances on.
This routine of half personal attacks, and half ridiculous anecdotes portraying a reverse world where you are surrounded by left wing Evangelicals voting 97% Obama, and you refusing to even reveal where that is, is bizarre.
You don’t seem to know anything of voting data or percentages, yet create your own fake numbers like “97%” of local evangelicals, yet now you want to inform us that reliable polls don’t exist from the last 50 years for national voting.
Name calling cannot conceal that you won’t even give a state, for your claims of Evangelical voting.
Let me see.
You answer a question with a question and refuse to go back and answer my question.
Then you call me a liar.
Then you allude to data that isn't actually available.
But the real problem is me calling names?
What data, for where?
We know how that Evangelicals voted 80% republican, which is their way, and that Catholics voted for pro-abortion Obama, which is their way, but no one can post data on your state, because you are afraid to even tell us what state or city that you keep claiming all this ridiculous stuff about.
Being afraid to even name the state that you keep posting on and making bizarre claims about, proves the total ridiculousness of your nonsense.
My point was that those who reject liberal Catholics as members are more Catholic than their church is in practice.
I suspect that part of the more conservative view is because of the belief in Sola Scriptura rather than tradition and organizational authority.
It is actually more due to the authority evangelicals give Scripture and the basically literal Scriptural "tradition" that goes along with it, versus the liberal scholarship seen in liberal Protestantism and R.Catholicism.
The Biblical literalist Catholic is as politically conservative as the Biblical literalist who is Evangelical (47.8%) or Mainline Protestant. (11.2%) - American Piety in the 21st Century, Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/33304.pdf
Interesting. Thanks
Yes. I almost expect to see one on what the pope had for dinner. Perhaps they receive an indulgence for each one.
When someone posts ‘the 1920s through the 1930s’ and another poster pretends that 1920 is the one to use to post numbers on to ignore the point of the decades of growth, then that poster isn’t seriously looking for sources.
In general I think that posts should be as short and uncluttered as possible, to be effective or at least interesting and readable.
There are a few times when two, or a few posters get into something heavy that requires lengthy posts and narratives, and links to each other, but that is rare.
Concise and clear is preferable, but on the religion forum often multiple points must be addressed, and substantiation given. I can post links for the latter, but some RCs have asserted they will not click on them.
But thanks for your input here.
Good night. I have been and am very sick with the flu, so my mind is not as clear as i would like it.
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